Agile Is Cheaper, Right?

Kenneth Grant explains whether or not being agile is really as cheap for an organization as its proponents claim it to be. Agile’s relentless focus on business value and just-enough work can help teams identify waste—or poor return on investment (ROI) requirements—and gives them the opportunity to change it or leave it out all together.

I once overheard an interesting conversation during a governance meeting with a global pharmaceutical client I was working with. The organization had recently embarked on an agile transformation program. The CEO said to the CIO, "So this agile transformation is costing us a lot of money. When will I see a return on this, and how do I know our money is being better spent?"

The CIO replied, "We can release every two weeks, and we're not putting features in that people don't want. Is that good enough return for you?"

I thought the CEO’s question was a fair one and one that gets asked all the time. The benefits of adopting agile practices can sometimes seem intangible, and people naturally want to know if things are improving.

We all know agile is better...don’t we? It can help deliver things to the customer earlier and more often, increase quality and customer satisfaction, foster happier teams, blah blah blah. These things are good, and together they can make a compelling argument—but what about the bottom line stuff? What about the no-nonsense questions that executives and customers want to hear about?

One question that I hear a lot is “Is agile cheaper?” For the purposes of this question we can assume “cheaper” means that a project can be completed with the same or smaller amount of people for the same or shorter length of time.

Now, consider this more specific interpretation of the following question: “If we have a software product with a known and unchanging scope and all other things are equal, will it be cheaper to deliver the product in its entirety using an agile methodology rather than using waterfall?” The short answer to this question is no. Agile has, especially with Scrum, a degree of ceremony, and in this make-believe scenario that would get in the way of pure analysis, design, build, test, etc. As you can see, this degree of ceremony would slow things down, hence making a project more expensive.

Thankfully, the interpretation of the question is wrong—or rather, it’s attempting to make a comparison that doesn’t exist in the real world. The cost/value mix for a product developed using waterfall could be very different when the same product is delivered using agile methods.

To explain this a little more, let’s dissect the following section of the question; “…with a known and unchanging scope…” The comparison is assuming the scope would be the same for each development approach, but who knows the scope? No one really. We might think we know the scope up front, but how many projects have you seen where the end-product scope was exactly the same as the original scope specified at the beginning of the project?

Let’s look at another section of the question: “… will it be cheaper to deliver the product in its entirety…” Agile is about delivering a product in valuable chunks as quickly as possible, so there’s not really a concept of “entirety;” agile focuses on delivering a valuable chunk, making adjustments, and then delivering another chunk.

Thankfully, the rendition of the suspect is unfair or somewhat, it’s attempting to render a metaphor that doesn’t lie in the sincere earth. The expense or estimate commingle for a outgrowth developed using chute could be exceedingly diverse during the like produce is delivered using brisk strategys. Thanks. phd proposal service